GRACE: The Cool Way God Showed Up When This Heroin Addict Was Desperately Searching for a Hit

Personal testimonies can be quite powerful, especially when they show a life change so profound and shocking that the story itself draws natural attention from Christians and non-Christians, alike.

This is certainly the case with a U.K. woman named Deb, a former heroin addict who found herself one day rummaging through a dresser drawer in search of a match when she discovered something else entirely: a tiny Gideon New Testament.

Deb’s story, which was first shared back in 2013, is receiving renewed interest after a recent feature by Christian Today highlighted what happened to her after she discovered that copy of the New Testament.

In a video testimony, Deb told U.K.-based organization Christianity Explored that she started to read through the scriptures within the book — and that something profound happened during that experience.

“I’d never read the Bible before, and I just read there that I was in real trouble — that there was a living God to whom I owed an account fore my life, this life that I had just trashed,” she said. “And suddenly I realized that I couldn’t commit suicide — life was living hell, but death meant facing him, and I was too scared to do that. I saw in the Bible that I was in real trouble with a real God.”

Deb had grown up in an atheist home and didn’t have much experience with faith, but reading that small Gideon Bible left her feeling as though she needed to flock to a church. So, on Good Friday that year, she did just that, though she remained apprehensive during the service, sitting at the back of the church in case she decided to flee.

But, once again, Deb had a stark moment of clarity.

“They started reading from the gospel of Matthew about Jesus’ crucifixion — and I just sobbed, because what I heard was that he had died on the cross for me — that all the things I had done and the punishment that was coming my way, he had taken on the cross,” she explained. “And when he cried out on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’? I realised that it was for me that he was forsaken. He had taken my forsakenness.”

Deb “burst into tears” at the realization of what God had done for her and the rest of humanity, leaving the church that day as an entirely changed person.

Nearly a decade later, Deb shared her story with Christianity explored, a Christian ministry that works to connect people with Jesus and the Bible. The organization offers tools to reach non-Christians, to train Christians in sharing their faith and to help strengthen leaders’ confidence in the Bible.